IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021 - 36

AI for a Fair, Just, and Equitable World

data from marginalized populations), and deployment (universal benefit). Finally, the HRBA would
require that accountability mechanisms are embedded into both the ICT design process and the monitoring of the impact on the community's well-being.
Indeed, accountability is at the core of the HRBA,
and thus has a special resonance with ethical ICT.
These criteria engender important research questions to which, in our opinion, not enough attention
has been paid in the academic sector. In fact, there
is a scarcity of ICT4D contributions in general in
high-impact conferences and journals, as observed
in [37] and [20]. One possible reason for this concerns the allocation of research funding. Not only
does obtaining specific finance give a tremendous
impetus to research, the procurement of significant
research funding from public-sector national or
supranational bodies is generally, and not unreasonably, viewed as a research seal of quality, not least
by journal editors and referees. At the same time,
disbursement of funding from these public-sector
bodies is determined according to preestablished
research line priorities. The corporate sector has
a substantial influence on the definition of these
research-line priorities [40] which may help to
explain why, to date, ICT4D has not been among
them. Tendencies to value some research over other
research can then be amplified in a feedback loop
often described by the term " Matthew effect " [41].
AI4Eq occupies a particular area within ICT4D
due to the very significant ethical and philosophical
problems and dilemmas that it gives rise to, and to
the fact that many of the risks associated with ICT,
in general, are magnified in the case of A/IS. An integral approach, based on development studies and
the principles of the HRBA, is especially pertinent
in this field. Already in the pioneering applications
described in [19], it was observed that the best outcomes were when social, economic, political, and
cultural, dimensions were integrated into the engineering and design process.
However, within the ICT4D literature, the presence of A/IS remains relatively low, despite its
potential to contribute to sustainable development now being widely recognized. For example,
of the 74 articles published in the International
Journal of Information Systems in Developing
Countries (IJISDC) in 2017-2018, only one, concerning mHealth, directly involves A/IS, and of the
58 articles published in the IJISDC in 2019-2020

(to date), only two, concerning the application of
big data, directly involve A/IS. Possible reasons for
this relative lack of representation of A/IS in the
ICT4D literature are the historical preponderance
of Information Systems in the ICT4D field, though
this is changing, and the lack of A/IS infrastructure
and A/IS-trained human capital in LMICs.
On the other hand, though the journals and conferences of the A/IS community contain many publications concerning the use of A/IS in LMICs, in
general, these lack development studies and HRBA
perspective. The AI-D Spring Symposium [42] constituted an early attempt to stimulate the field of AI
for development in the academic sector but, unfortunately, was held only once.
The last few years have seen the emergence of initiatives in the academic world that clearly fall in the
field of AI4Eq such as the NeurIPS Joint Workshop
on AI for Social Good.1 Even the IEEE [7] emphasizes
that design methodologies and tools should take into
account social, as well as economic, criteria and that
the impact of deployed systems on user and community well-being should be monitored. Of course, as is
also recognized in [7] and [18], methodologies and
tools cannot be a replacement for legislation or manuals of ethics and good business practices, but can
and should support their implementation. Academic
research, private sector self-regulation, and legislation are necessary and complementary actions. But
it is important that research and development methodologies and tools comply with universal ethical
principles, since legislation may be lax or unclear
in some contexts, this being more likely to occur in
LMICs and when the most vulnerable are concerned.
In the academic field, there is a need for independent and scientifically rigorous research in the field
of AI4Eq with an empirical dimension since, to date,
this dimension is mostly lacking.

Way forward for AI4Eq
As stated earlier, we consider that there is an ethical imperative for educational and research institutions to harness AI technologies to the benefit of
humanity to improve quality-of-life for all rather than
contribute to perpetuating systemic injustices. To
this end, more R&D in the potential of AI to contribute to the SDGs is urgently needed.
1

https://aiforsocialgood.github.io/neurips2019/

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

https://aiforsocialgood.github.io/neurips2019/

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021

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